Epoch-eclipse now

Just five days to go for the arrival of the solar eclipse, which will be visible from western Mexico to eastern Canada on April 8. Weather permitting, it really should be a once-in-a-lifetime show, and the hype machines are gearing up accordingly.

My little town will be in the area of totality for just over three minutes near mid-afternoon. So will Niagara Falls, twenty minutes drive from us (though probably not on April 8), and in keeping with its over-the-top money-grabbing ethos, that little city is pulling out all the stops. The chief carnival barker, Mayor Jim Diodati, is telling everyone who will listen that he is expecting one million people to show up.

I'm not sure why Diodati or anyone else would imagine that watching it in Niagara Falls will somehow make the eclipse more exciting.  Plenty of other less glitzy towns in the area -- Buffalo, NY or Hamilton, ON for example -- will get exactly the same celestial show. It's also not clear how Diodati figures his city can accommodate anything like a million people. Have you ever been? Its permanent population is less than 90,000 and the tourist area, which is presumably where all the visitors will try to go, is really quite small -- basically it's a kilometre or two along the edge of the Niagara River, plus the incomparably tacky Clifton Hill, which makes the Las Vegas strip look like the Uffizi gallery. 

There are going to be extra trains to bring people down from Toronto, but this being Canada, there will only be three of them, and a quick back-of-the envelope calculation suggests they will be able to accommodate fewer than 10,000 people even with crush loads. So most of Diodati's million will be coming by car. At four persons per car, that suggests there will be 250,000 vehicles converging on the city. 

There's only one expressway to Niagara Falls, and it's busy at the best of times. Even for those who do make it into town, there is nowhere to park that many cars. And even if you do find parking, there is no way the tourist area can accommodate the people.  Total visitor numbers to the Canadian side of the Falls were about 13 million in 2022. That was a COVID year so the numbers may be higher now, but that equates to about 40,000 per day -- and as anyone who has ever visited can attest, the tourist area is always packed. 

Has Mayor Diodati though this through? What's your guess?  However, the very strong likelihood is that potential visitors have thought it through, and that many of them will think better of it, resulting in crowds that are just a fraction of the numbers Diodati is counting on.  That said, it's still going to be a zoo, and I won't be going any further than my south-facing driveway that day. 

UPDATE, 9 April: The first official estimate is that a total of 200,000 visitors took in the eclipse in the Niagara region, which is about 30 miles long. That's a far cry from Diodati's one million in Niagara Falls alone. There were maybe 100,000 in that city.  How many people were put off by Diodati's insane prediction?  Not that they missed much -- overcast skies across the area throughout the eclipse. And since I haven't stooped to this before, allow me to point out that an anagram of Diodati is "da idiot".

A Lob-Law unto themselves

Back in the summer of 2023, the Canadian Government summoned the heads of the major grocery chains in Canada to a meeting in Ottawa, demanding that they do something to reduce the rate of food price inflation.  If we're naming names, there were five chains at the meeting -- three Canadian-owned (Loblaws, Metro and Sobey's) and two US-owned (Costco and Walmart).  

The pace of food price inflation has in fact fallen sharply since that first meeting, though there's no evidence that the pressure from the government had much to do with it. The Government has tried to keep the issue on the front pages, even going so far as to hint that it was trying to attract a foreign grocery chain into the Canadian market to increase the level of competition, a bizarre thing for any national government to do. It has also announced its intention to impose a legally-binding Code of Grocery Conduct on the existing quintet.

For the most part, the CEOs of the five firms have largely suffered through all this posturing in silence, with one exception. Loblaws CEO, the multi-billionaire Galen Weston, has been visibly angry about the whole process, blaming the rise in food prices during and after the pandemic mainly on the company's suppliers. He has also begun to warn that the Code of Grocery Conduct as currently propose will tend to push prices even higher, not lower them. 

This week we have found out why Galen can be so confident about this outcome. Loblaws has announced that it will be ending its current practice of cutting the prices of soon-to-expire food items -- bread. veggies, prepared meals and such -- by up to 50 percent in order to get them off the shelves. It portrays this deeply cynical move in an even more deeply cynical way, as providing "more consistency with our competitors".  I don't know about you, but I have generally thought that competition is supposed to help keep prices down, not provide cover for putting them up, but here we are.

As the linked article suggests, this looks a lot like collusion to a lot of people, although one of the quoted experts suggests it is "conscious parallelism" -- watching your competitors and imitating them.  Fair enough, but the timing of this, coming after all the meetings with the government and the threat of the Code of Grocery Conduct, looks very much like Loblaws flipping the bird at the government.  If Galen Weston actually wants a Piggly-Wiggly, or more likely an Aldi, across the street from one of his stores, he's going the right way about it.

UPDATE, January 20:  Well, here's a thing you don't see every day!  Loblaws has reversed its decision to eliminate the 50 percent discount as a result of the uproar its initial announcement caused.  Well done, Galen Weston, but next time, "measure twice, cut once".

Canada's online news scam

Back in June, the Canadian government passed the Online News Act, which was aimed at shielding traditional media outlets from losing revenue to online platforms.  There is no question that the likes of Facebook and Google have been hoovering up a growing portion of the advertising revenue that had previously gone to newspapers and the like.  Rather than moving on from their advertising-based business models, the old media lobbied the government to introduce measures to force the newcomers to share the loot.

As soon as the Act came into effect, Meta/Facebook made it impossible to use their platform to link to traditional media outlets.  This complies with the Act, though hardly in the way that the government intended, and the ban remains in place to this day. Back during the wildfire season in early summer, the newspapers were full of stories that Facebook's intransigence was putting Canadians' lives at risk by depriving them of vital information.

Google took a less confrontational approach, and last month announced that it had agreed a deal that would see it pay C$ 100 million per year to the old media outlets in order to comply with the new law.  As the linked article above shows, details of who will actually get Google's money are now emerging, not without some wrangling. The Toronto Star quickly decided that the overall package was not adequate, which brings thoughts of gift horses and their mouths to mind.  The CBC lobbied for and appears to have been awarded a share of the pot, even though it already receives upwards of a billion dollars of taxpayers' money each year.   

Anyway, now that the deal is in place, presumably we can go onto Google and read stories in the Toronto Star or the Globe and Mail to our hearts' content, right? Don't be silly! If you try to read a story in the Star online you will still be faced with a demand to take out a subscription.  (Try it for yourself, here.)  You could, of course, have taken out that subscription at any time, before all of this nonsense started -- and yet somehow we are meant to believe that it was Google and Facebook that were the ones denying us access to the news. All that's changed is that the Star et al have found a way to get paid twice for being being the same mediocre* newspapers as before.  

Shameless shakedown or devious double-dipping?  Decide for yourself, but in the meantime don't believe everything you read in the newspapers. 

* It's almost Christmas so I'm feeling charitable. 

We didn't start the fires

......but we can certainly manipulate the story for political advantage. Everybody's doing it!

Predictably, climate change activists are blaming the extremely active fire season in the Northern Hemisphere (Alberta!  BC!! Quebec!!! Yellowknife!!!! Hawaii!!!!! Tenerife!!!!!!) on climate change. Serious scientists are careful not to say climate change is the direct cause of these extreme weather events, but journalists are not so scrupulous. I actually heard one talking head this past weekend lumping the Ventura county earthquake in with Hurricane Hillary as a symptom of climate change.

On the other side of the spectrum, climate change deniers are taking equally extreme positions. A favourite argument is that the exceptionally high number of wildfires this year is mainly down to arson.  Every year there are fires that are directly caused by humans, either campers being careless with the matches or actual arsonists.  The added spice this year is that it is now apparently necessary to blame someone specific, and the bigger the culprit, the better the story.  Here in Canada I have seen it asserted, without a shred of evidence, that "climate vigilantes" have been setting fires on the direct orders of Justin Trudeau and/or the World Economic Forum. 

Let's just think about the logistics of this tsunami of arson for a second. The reason many of the fires in northern Quebec were allowed to just burn themselves out is that they happened in areas so remote that firefighters could not gain access to them. Yet we are apparently supposed to believe that arsonists were able to move freely about in these inaccessible regions, setting fire after fire and making it home safely to tell the tale. I don't think so. 

We may be able to exonerate Justin Trudeau from any direct involvement in setting the fires, but that doesn't mean he is not heavily involved in all this. His heart-on-sleeve "green" government is naturally playing up the role of climate change in all this (and completely downplaying any impact from arson).  But Trudeau is also seizing the opportunity to advance another part of his agenda: his battle to shake down Meta and Google to force them to bail out Canada's struggling legacy media, through an Act of Parliament known as Bill C-18.

Bill C-18 requires companies like Google and Meta to pay for any links they provide to Canadian news media. Meta has responded more robustly than Google, complying with the letter of the law -- though not its intent -- by removing such links from its websites.  The Government is furious, even though anyone with half a brain (and even some experts) tried hard to warn them this would happen.

Trudeau has glommed onto the opportunity provided by the forest fires, most notably those burning around Yellowknife, to lambast Meta for putting Canadians' lives at risk by depriving them of access to fast-breaking news.  Two points here: first, my own very informal and unscientific survey suggests that virtually no-one actually relied on Meta platforms for access to news sources.  Second, Trudeau has  apparently not found it necessary to suggest to the media that they might remove their own paywalls for the duration of the crisis. So even if you still had access to, say, the Toronto Star via Facebook, you still wouldn't be able to read anything beyond the headline: the paywall would keep the actual content from you. Well thought through there, Justin. 

The slippery slope

There's no denying that the taxpayer-funded health care system in Ontario, in common with much of the world, is under strain at the moment. The impact of years of under-funding has been greatly exacerbated by the COVID pandemic, resulting in delayed surgeries and even occasional, short-lived closures of emergency rooms in rural areas.  

There's also no denying that Ontario Premier Doug Ford thinks the private sector does just about everything better than the public sector, so it's no surprise that his solution to the health care crisis is to start farming more of it out to the private sector. This morning the Premier announced a three-part plan to do just that, starting with cataract surgeries, then moving on to diagnostic tests such as colonoscopies, and then to knee and hip replacement. This is all controversial, to put it mildly. Here are a few preliminary thoughts. 

The first point that needs to be made is that there is already a lot of private money involved in the Ontario health care system. As the linked article notes, there are already 900 private diagnostic and surgical offices in the Province. Moreover, dental and routine ophthalmic care is basically fully private already, and most people do not get any public funding for prescription drugs. Insurance companies enthusiastically fill the airwaves with ads to help with the cost of services the public system does not cover. 

Premier Ford is adamant that the steps being introduced today will not require Ontarians to reach for their credit card when they visit a private clinic. Your health card (known as an OHIP card) will still have you covered.  He is equally adamant that the new clinics will not in any way cannibalize the public system, particularly as regards staffing.  That can surely only be true if there are squadrons of ophthalmic surgeons (and later, orthopedic surgeons) currently sitting around twiddling their thumbs outside the public system, just waiting for the opportunity to open a clinic of their own. 

It can be fairly confidently stated that that's not the case. Staffing for the new clinics will exacerbate the existing shortage of medical professionals in Ontario. A much better solution already exists for that shortage: speed up the process of certifying fully-qualified immigrants to work in the Province's health-care system. 

Cataract surgery and diagnostic testing is one thing, but joint replacement, even relatively routine procedures like knee and hip replacements, is surely another thing altogether.  How many private sector clinics will invest in the premises and equipment needed to carry out these surgeries quickly and safely? Will they really be able to do this at a lower cost than the public sector does?  Then there is the issue of surgical complications. In the UK, which has a fully-fledged private system alongside the NHS, the private sector only takes on routine operations: anything that looks likely to run the risk of complications is quickly punted back into the public system. As in most areas of "public-private partnership", it quickly becomes apparent that the private sector has much more appetite for reward than it does for risk. 

There may well be a case for small stand-alone clinics to cover routine procedures and take the pressure off full-service hospitals. It's much less clear that the private sector will operate such clinics more efficiently and economically than the public sector can. And the really big fear here has to be that,  having whetted his appetite with the relatively minor steps announced today,  Doug Ford will sooner or later press ahead with much wider privatization of health care.  

Given Ontario's proximity to the United States, this recent warning from the excellent UK blogger Chris Dillow about health care problems in that country's National Health Service surely goes double here: In this world, we must guard against the (high) risk that the task of reforming the NHS will be undertaken by vicious incompetents in hock to US insurance companies. There would be very little support for that in any part of Canada, but that doesn't mean Ford isn't thinking about it. Ontario's healthcare system may just have been placed on a very slippery slope. 

Who cares who cares?

The summer months have seen Ontario media crammed with stories about the supposed collapse of the Province's healthcare system.  A vanishingly small number of short-term emergency room shutdowns has been offered as evidence that the entire system is "on the brink".  An unholy alliance has sprung up almost overnight. Commentators on the left, led of course by the Toronto Star,  argue that the fault lies with the Doug Ford government, while those on the right want to see further privatization in order to ease pressure on the system.

As it happens, yours truly has had lots of exposure to the health care system in the last two months, as my wife has received a hip replacement.  There have been countless visits to hospitals, diagnostic centres, physios and such. There have been no issues at any stage of the process, and no signs of the burnout, staff morale problems and all the rest of it that we read about every single day.  It's dangerous to generalize from a single example, but if our experience in our very unfashionable small city is anything to go by, the health system remains resilient.

It's worth pointing out that the Ontario health system is by no means exclusively a public sector operation. Hospitals are public, but there is no public dental care whatsoever, eye care is a mixture of public and private, there is no pharmacare except for seniors and most diagnostic centres (blood tests and such) are privately operated. Wall-to-wall TV ads offering insurance for "the things your public health plan doesn't cover" offer all the evidence you need that the system is already far from comprehensive.

Be that as it may, the Ford government is not about to let a good crisis go to waste, and today unveiled a multi-part plan to relieve the pressure on the system. One element of the plan calls for allowing private clinics to offer a wider range of procedures while making sure that costs are still covered by OHIP, the Province's health care plan.

It's not at all clear why this would be a better or lower-cost option than simply increasing funding for the public system. At the start of this century I spent more than a decade living in the UK, which has a mixed public and private health care system. I could write a whole post about this, but one observation that's relevant here is that the private sector goes after the low-hanging fruit. They'll schedule you for a hip replacement if it looks likely to be a simple procedure, but if there's any risk of complications they'll boot you back to the nearest public hospital before your ass hits the gurney.  

Supporters of greater private sector involvement in health care point to a variety of countries that have a blended system and deliver better outcomes than Canada at a lower cost; France and Spain are two regularly cited examples. Fair enough, but does anyone really believe that opening up the Ontario health system to private money would move us in that direction? Far more likely that an influx of money and methods from across the border to our south would push up costs and rapidly erode the equal access that we currently enjoy. I'll take a pass, thanks.

Ford drives on

I haven't bothered until now to post anything about the Ontario Provincial election campaign, which ended yesterday with a thumping victory for the Conservatives and their lumpen leader, Doug Ford. The election campaign was marked by a profound lack of engagement on the part of the electorate, which was duly reflected in a 43 percent turnout at the polls, by far the lowest ever. There seemed to be little reason to inflict any of this of the faithful readers of this blog. 

By and large the media don't much like Doug Ford. He's not one for making public appearances all over the place in order to maintain a high profile with the voters. He campaigned much less actively than his opponents this time out, and yet still managed to increase both his party's share of the vote and its representation in the Provincial legislature at Queen's Park.

The sour grapes in the media began even before the votes were tallied, because it was very obvious early on that neither the Liberals nor the New Democrats were going to lay a glove on the Tories.  Pundits suggested the public indifference to the whole event was playing into Ford's hands, but isn't that kind of missing the point? It's rarely if ever up to the incumbent government to inject excitement into an election campaign. The incumbent will always be judged primarily on its track record. It's up to the opposition parties to get the fireworks going, and the ultra-low turnout yesterday shows that they entirely failed to do so.

The leaders of the two largest opposition parties have already paid the price of failure, with both quitting even before all the votes were tallied. This was NDP leader Andrea Horwath's fourth election at the helm. Although her party retained its status as official opposition, she has chosen to make way for new blood, but given that she has been the face of the party since 2010, it may be hard to find a replacement with any kind of public profile. As for the Liberals, it says it all that their leader, Steven Del Duca, was not a member of the legislature before the election, and failed to win a riding he has lived in for many years. The party won so few seats that it will not have official party status going forward. There are unlikely to be many takers for the leadership.

We have to spend a moment to consider the role of the Toronto Star, Canada's highest-circulation newspaper, in all of this.  The Star hates all Tories but has a particularly strong animus for Doug Ford. When the COVID pandemic arrived, the Star chose to have one reporter -- Bruce Arthur, notionally a sports columnist -- focus on nothing but COVID, with a barely concealed mandate to blame absolutely everything on Ford. 

So much for that. Although there was plenty to criticize about how Ford handled COVID, it would be hard to argue that he did a worse job than anyone else in a similar position, and Bruce's incessant carping may well have turned a lot of people off.  In the wake of the election Bruce is calling for reform of Ontario's first past the post electoral system, in order to prevent the Tories from winning thumping majorities with only 40 percent of the vote.  Similar concerns were not often heard from the Star earlier in this century, when the Liberals racked up fifteen consecutive years in office. 

Four more years of Ford is not something we can look forward to. His team are mostly a graceless lot and some of his election pledges, notably an expensive and unnecessary new highway for the Greater Toronto area, are very bad indeed. But his success yesterday can have come as no surprise to anyone who had been paying attention. What's more, given the leadership vacuum on the Liberal and NDP benches, you would already make the Tories favourites for the 2026 election -- maybe under the leadership of Doug's nephew Michael, who was elected for the first time yesterday. 

Promises, promises

It has been clear for some time that the outcome of the Ontario provincial election, to be held on June 2, will depend on which party's extravagant promises the voters choose to believe. Doug Ford's governing Conservatives have been unveiling populist promises on almost a weekly basis since the start of the year. The most blatant bribe: removing the annual fee for renewing your car license plate -- and not just on a going-forward basis: you also got a cheque in the mail for whatever you had paid to renew for the last couple of years.  

On Thursday Provincial Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy tabled the annual Provincial budget. Coming from a government that has stressed fiscal prudence, it's quite a shocker. The Tories are planning a major, multi-year increase in spending, with a focus on infrastructure. The capital spending program will total C$ 158.8 billion over ten years, with major spending on highways, public transit, hospitals and schools.  There will also be tax cuts targeted at seniors and low-income workers, the latter defined as individuals with an annual income below $50,000. 

Predictably, all of this is going to balloon the deficit. The shortfall for the 2021/22 fiscal year, which ended at the start of April, is estimated to have been $ 13.5 billion. Thanks to the economy's robust recovery from the worst of the pandemic, this is way lower than originally expected, and until yesterday the Province's own Financial Accountability Office was projecting a return to budget balance by FY 2023/24. So much for that: Bethlenfalvy's budget calls for a deficit of  $ 19.9 billion for the current fiscal year, falling to $12.3 billion in 2023/24 and continuing to fall gradually through mid-decade. 

Even before the government tabled its own budget, the leftish NDP had already started to unveil its own platform. It promises lower taxes for everyone earning less than $200,000 per year, which is the vast majority of Ontarians. This morning the Liberal leader, Steven DelDuca, was on the breakfast TV circuit making bad jokes and promising to remove sales tax on restaurant-prepared foods costing less than $ 20.  No doubt there will be more tasty treats in store as soon as the Liberals unveil their full platform. 

It's difficult to take any of this too seriously -- and that goes for Bethlenfalvy's budget just as much as the promises of the current opposition parties. The Provincial Legislature has now stood down to allow the election campaign to get started, so the budget is in effect nothing more than the Tories' election platform, and may well amount to nothing at all if Ford and his team are swept from office on June 2. As for the other parties' promises, those will as ever be hostage to the usual post-election wailing about how "the finances are in much worse shape than we thought, so alas we can't deliver all the goodies we promised".

Everyone is fatigued after two years of the pandemic, so it's perhaps no surprise to see the election shaping up this way. But how many of these promises see the light of day after June2 may be quite another matter. 

That's convenient!

Ontario's latest fiscal update was released on Valentine's Day, and went almost unnoticed amid everything portentous that's going on in Canada and around the world. That's a pity, because it looks as though the Province's dramatic fiscal improvement will be one of the key planks in the election platform for Doug Ford's Tories come the June election.

The Province's Finance Minister, my old Bay Street oppo Peter Bethlenfalvy, announced that the projected deficit for the 2021-2022 fiscal year (April-March) is now C$ 13.1 billion, $ 8.4 billion lower than the figure projected just three months ago in the mid-year update. The improved outlook is almost entirely the result of a $ 8 billion estimated improvement in Provincial revenues, itself a direct result of a better-than-expected rebound in the Provincial economy.

Bethlenfalvy is required to table a budget by March 31, and will no doubt delay until as close as possible to that date so as to maximize the positive impact on the Tory election campaign. The impact of the omicron COVID variant is not entirely captured by this week's data, but it is hard to imagine that Bethlenfalvy hasn't thought of that, and may indeed have kept some good news in reserve so as to announce an even better fiscal outcome on budget day.

So the main elements of the Tory election platform are falling into place.  Fiscal improvement? Check!  Removal of almost all health restrictions? Check!! Abolition of fees for annual renewal of auto license plates? Check!!! Doug Ford is a charmless boor, but it would be brave to bet against his winning another term, given the lackluster opposition he faces. 

Sound and fury, signifying nothing

Those words from Macbeth seem like the perfect way to sum up Canada's Federal election, which took place on Monday. After a clamorous 35-day campaign, the outcome is a House of Commons eerily similar in composition to the one it replaces. The Liberals were about a dozen seats short of a majority before the vote; subject to any last minute corrections, they will be about a dozen seats short of a majority in the new Parliament. The Conservatives, despite again winning more votes than the Liberals, will again be about forty seats behind them. The NDP and Bloc Quebecois, both with around thirty seats previously, will again each have about thirty seats.

Evidently $ 600 million, which is what this election is estimated to have cost, doesn't get you what it used to.  It's hard to pick out any winners here, unless you count the manufacturer of the millions of stubby pencils handed out to voters at polling stations as a COVID precaution. Plenty of losers, though. Let's look down the list, starting with....

Erin O'Toole, the Conservative leader, had little public profile ahead of the election campaign. He seems likeable enough, unlike some of his caucus, but he failed to capitalize on a variety of issues that could have been used to bring down the Liberals -- the sheer pointlessness of the election, Justin Trudeau's perceived lack of gravitas, the mounting cost of COVID benefit schemes that may no longer be needed. Unlike his feckless predecessor, Andrew Scheer, he is unlikely to be ditched as a punishment for failure, but his party will not be merciful in a year or two if he is unable to make an impact in  Parliament.  

Jagmeet Singh, leader of the ever-so-slightly leftist NDP, is widely admired for his intelligence, even by  those who would never vote for him. The NDP is often described as "Liberals in a hurry"; in the last Parliament they regularly propped up Trudeau's government in the House of Commons, getting precious little in return and, as the vote count suggests, doing nothing to build on their support base. Singh's smart nice guy act may start to pall if the party continues to keep Trudeau afloat in the new Parliament.

Canada -- yes, the whole country -- is a clear loser here, and not just because of that wasted 600 mil'.  There's some small consolation to be had in the fact that the perfectly odious People's Party of Canada (populist, nativist) failed to elect anyone to Parliament. But this election served yet again to underline the deep divisions within the country.  The Liberals were elected by the country's poorest region (the Atlantic Provinces) and its three most cosmopolitan cities, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. The prairie provinces and most of Ontario were solidly Tory, while the Bloc Quebecois continues its hold on most of Quebec.  In their six years in office, the Trudeau Liberals have done nothing to bring the country together.

And lastly, we come to Justin Trudeau himself, probably the biggest loser of all. The election was his gamble and it failed to net him a majority government. His flimsy rationale for having an election at all centered on the fact that the House of Commons was hard to manage -- evidently he has not spent much time studying how things go in the US Congress or the UK House of Commons, let alone the Israeli Knesset.  Ottawa is a bastion of politeness and tranquility by comparison. He is unlikely to find things any easier now.

Many years ago Trudeau's father, Pierre, famously took a walk in an Ottawa snowstorm and decided to resign the Prime Ministership. Justin may soon start hearing subtle hints that it's time for him to strap on his snowshoes and take a walk of his own. His Deputy (and Finance Minister) Chrystia Freeland has been doing most of the top job for the past couple of years anyway, and is almost embarrassingly keen to take over. If that happens, it won't be long before she sees the need to obtain a personal mandate from the people, in the form of yet another election. Better put another $ 600 million aside -- we may be needing it soon.  

Just what I wanted!

To the surprise of absolutely nobody, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has called a Federal election, to be held on September 20.  So much for the concept of fixed election dates, passed into law by PM Stephen Harper more than a decade ago but largely ignored by everyone (including Harper) ever since. An election is not actually due until October 2023, but Trudeau thinks he spies an opportunity to win back the majority that he lost in the 2019 election. 

Trudeau's suggestion that Canadians "deserve a say" is in effect his first untruth of the election campaign. Opinion polls suggest Canadians don't want an election right now, with a fourth wave of the COVID pandemic starting to spread across the country. The main national opposition parties -- the Conservatives and the left-leaning New Democrats (NDP), both running behind Trudeau's Liberals in the opinion polls -- don't want an election either, which is precisely why Trudeau is so keen to have one as soon as possible. 

The parties' full platforms for the election are not available yet, but many of the key elements for the three main parties can already be discerned.

The Liberals will largely run on their record, especially in regard to COVID. After what was perceived as a slow start, Canada's vaccination program has been one of the most effective in the world. Although the first wave of COVID back in 2020 took a severe toll on the economy, Canada is much closer to regaining its pre-pandemic GDP than the US is; Trudeau will claim that this is thanks to the myriad support schemes his Government introduced and will assure Canadians that the fiscal cost of these schemes can be afforded as the economy returns to normal growth.

If the Liberals have a weakness, it may be on foreign policy,  not normally much of an issue in Canadian politics.  Relations with China are positively frosty, thanks to Canada's failure to duck a US request to detain a Huawei executive, Meng Wangzhou, as she passed through Vancouver airport two years ago. Extradition proceedings are still underway, on charges that are frankly a textbook example of US legal over-reach. In retaliation, China has held two Canadian citizens on dubious spying charges and has sentenced a third to death on drug smuggling charges.  Trudeau has been unable to break this logjam, and appeals for help from Washington have gone unheeded, just one example of Canada's lack of influence there, even with President Biden in the Oval Office. 

The Conservatives' opening pitch will be that they are not Justin Trudeau, which will be sufficient to win them plenty of seats in some parts of the country, particularly Western Canada. Party leader Erin O'Toole's platform will focus heavily on the need to return to balanced budgets as soon as possible. His finance expert (and presumptive Finance Minister, if the Tories win the election), Pierre Poilievre, is borderline rabid on fiscal matters, an approach that may not play well in the heat of a seven-week election campaign.

The Conservatives' main weakness may turn out to be their lack of cohesion as a party. Non-Canadians might be surprised to learn how much US-style religious fundamentalism and pro-gun sentiment there is in Canada, especially in the West.  Those folks lean heavily Tory. There is also an evident east-west divide on energy policy, with the producing Provinces in the west (Alberta, Saskatchewan) keen to maximize revenues from their fossil fuel resource, while the rest of the country is turning ever so gradually greener.  It will be tough for O'Toole to thread this needle.

The NDP has been whining that an election is not needed because it has been supporting Trudeau in making the minority government work, which is a peculiar way to launch an election fight, to say the least. The only substantive pledge the party has made so far has been the introduction of a national pharmacare plan. This would be a good thing, but will lay the party open to accusations of spendthriftery from both of the other parties.  NDP leader Jagmeet Singh seems like a nice guy -- and his wife has just revealed an amazingly opportune pregnancy -- but the NDP has never formed a government at the national level and is highly unlikely to get close this time. 

It's possible that Trudeau will pay a price for inflicting an election on Canadians in the final weeks of summer, and in this year of all years, but for now this looks like the Liberals' election to lose. As for me, well, as I was doing a few errands this morning a catchy little reggae number came on the radio:  Conscious Party, by Ziggy Marley. Wonder if they'll be running a candidate in Niagara? 

Waiting for the call

It seems likely that a Federal election will be called in Canada very soon. Justin Trudeau's Liberal government does not have a majority in the House of Commons and the PM would, understandably, like to change that. Were it not for the pandemic, an election would probably have taken place several months ago -- the last election was in October 2019, and minority governments rarely last much more than a year. Now, however, Trudeau must surely see that conditions are looking very auspicious for his party. Here are some of the main factors.

COVID:  this is the key factor in a couple of ways. 

• First, it would have been grossly irresponsible to start an election while the pandemic was at its height. However, the infection rate in Canada has fallen sharply over the past two months, so the health risk posed by holding a vote is very much less than it was. That said, health professionals are still warning of a possible resurgence in infections, possibly accompanied by a worse-than-usual flu season, once the colder weather returns. An election soon after Labour Day would almost certainly take place against a background of very low COVID; wait until closer to Thanksgiving and the picture might be rather worse.

• Second, the successful vaccine rollout will be one of the Liberals' key campaign issues. Going back a few months, the Government was facing harsh criticism for failing to procure enough vaccines and for adopting a single-dose strategy (not initially recommended by the pharma companies) to spread the doses around. Now we find Canada is near the top of the international list for first doses (close to 80 percent of adults) and moving up fast on second doses (well over 50 percent). The public has a short memory, however, so the Liberals would probably be well advised to get the election underway while this success is still top of mind.    

The economy: Canada's economy took a bad beating during the first wave of the pandemic but has come through the second and third waves with much less damage. Real GDP will probably surpass its pre-pandemic high in the next two or three months. Although unemployment is still elevated, there should be strong job gains in the next few months. This is a good scenario for a government seeking re-election, especially if you believe (as you should) Bill Clinton's old adage that "it's the economy, stupid".  To delay the election into the Fall would be to risk the economy losing some momentum, particularly if there is a resurgence in the pandemic.

The opposition: it's hard to know where to start here, but suffice it to say that the parties that would be seeking to replace the Liberals are an unimpressive bunch.

• The Conservatives have contrived to select themselves another unattractive leader, Erin O'Toole. Their "front bench" consists mainly of faceless nonentities, with a few exceptions such as their attack dog finance critic, Pierre Poilievre. The party is widely perceived to have been captured by its right-wing elements, a group that bears more than a passing resemblance to the Trump GOP.

• The left-of-centre NDP is seen by many as nothing more than enablers for the Liberals, voting with the government on issues of confidence that could have triggered an early election. Its leader Jagmeet Singh is amiable but is unlikely to offer any real alternative to Trudeau.

• As for what we might call the single-issue parties, the Bloc Quebecois has recovered from a near-death experience a year or two ago, but still seems unlikely to take many seats from the Liberals in that Province. The Green Party is quite simply in chaos, with party insiders, seemingly goaded on by the party's former leader, turning on the newly leader they themselves chose not many months ago. 

To be clear, I don't relish the prospect of one of Canada's endless election campaigns and I don't in any way endorse the present government.  But if you put all of these factors together you can easily see why Trudeau will probably call an election as soon as he decently can.

You can't always want what you get

 A few thoughts about an exchange I was involved in over on Twitter yesterday.Names have been changed to protect the guilty. 

The first tweet was from a reasonably well-known TV reporter:

* Another $15-billion-plus in new spending announced today by Justin Trudeau to extend wage and rent subsidies and boost innovation. And we haven't even got to a budget yet. This government sure knows how to spend even though many Canadians have never had more in savings.

This promptly got this response from a Toronto Star columnist:

* Which Canadians?

The obvious implication, given the political leanings of the Star, was that it was only rich Canadians. Thus these responses soon afterward:

* Best question of the day! These sweeping statements and "headlines" now are purely to trigger and very uninformed. " I was talking to some people" ....

* Canadians who had high-profile careers in media, had employers to indemnify them when they wrote defamatory articles, and retired to play golf and opine.

* (reasonably well-known TV reporter) and his friends.

The next response was from your esteemed blogger, as follows:

* StatsCan data just yesterday showed that the household savings rate in Q4/2020 was over 12 percent. Also showed that lower income groups fared surprisingly well in terms of incomes in 2020.

I was braced for some insulting responses basically calling for me to eff off along with the StatsCan I rode in on, but to my great surprise, the comments virtually dried up right away. My real issue, though, is with the Toronto Star columnist. You might think that the Star, which is unbendingly pro-Liberal, would have seen the StatsCan data as proof that the Federal Government's pandemic income support schemes, while they are wildly expensive, are working well. That is, after all, the truth, as was well explained by columnist Don Pittis over at the CBC website. Instead all we got from the Star was a snarky comment from a columnist who had likely not bothered to look at the actual data.

This points to an essential truth about the Star's journalism. It's heavily based on giving a platform to victimhood, both real and manufactured. If that's your world view and indeed your raison d'etre, there's really no place for good news. If the world's problems were put to rights, what would be the point of the Toronto Star?

Careful what you wish for

There are plenty of Donald Trump supporters in Canada: even a quick glance at the readers' comments section on any article in the National Post makes that clear.  However, it's probably fair to say that a majority of Canadians were happy to see Joe Biden win the Presidential election. Having a ringside seat at the circus is fun for one night, but it gets a bit wearing after four years. Prime Minister Trudeau and his Deputy, Chrystia Freeland, must have been hoping for an easier ride after dealing with the mercurial Trump.

Less than a week into Biden's term, those hopes are already looking ragged. On his very first day in office, Biden signed an executive order rescinding the permit for construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. This rather peculiar project was designed to transport oil from the Alberta tar sands to refineries on the US Gulf Coast. The US does not actually need the oil: it would all be refined and exported. The very existence of the scheme is evidence of Alberta's growing desperation to get its product to tidewater.

The project is an environmental nightmare, despite its owners' promise to make the pipeline itself carbon neutral by 2030. Tar sands oil is intrinsically dirty and bringing a project of this scale into being would make it almost impossible to meet Canada's "green" targets. The Federal and Alberta governments have been all-in on the project from the start, but it triggered widespread protests by Indigenous groups in North Dakota, prompting the Obama administration to cancel it. Trump revived it by way of an executive order and work resumed, but now Biden, in an early gesture to the more progressive wing of his party, has nixed it again.

Keystone XL assuredly won't rise from the grave again, but Alberta Premier Jason Kenney isn't giving up. He is demanding that the Federal Government make the case for it with the Biden administration, which seems entirely pointless. He wants compensation from the US for the billions Alberta has already spent on it: good luck with that. And he has even gone so far as to suggest that Canada should retaliate against the US and risk starting a trade war if the project does not go ahead.  

You can relax on that score, Premier Kenney, because President Biden is way ahead of you on the trade war front. On Monday the President signed another in the endless stream of Executive Orders that have come across his desk since the Inauguration, this one aimed at strengthening Buy America provisions in government procurement. Protectionism is a big part of the Democratic Party's DNA, and this action is a gesture by Biden towards the more traditional wing of his party.

Canada is, of course, part of a North American free trade deal with the US and Mexico, and the Federal Government in Ottawa seems relaxed about the whole thing. Still, it is an added complication in the cross-border trading relationship and offers further evidence, as if any were needed, that agreements with the US government, however formal they may be, rarely survive the transition from one administration to another unscathed.

All in all the next few months look very challenging for Canada. On top of the challenges posed by the new administration, the country is facing the prospect of a very slow rollout of the COVID vaccines that are supposed to allow the economy to reopen. Canada produces none of these vaccines domestically. Trump signed an order keeping all US vaccine production for US citizens and there is near-zero likelihood that Biden will reverse that. Now the EU, where Pfizer's vaccine is manufactured (specifically, in Belgium) is also contemplating export curbs. 

Against this background there are bizarre suggestions that the Trudeau government is toying with the possibility of a spring election. To my non-political eye that seems almost like a death wish. One thing's for sure: if yours truly doesn't get a vaccine pretty damn quickly, that's one vote that definitely will not be going to Trudeau.  Actually I won't be voting for him anyway, but don't tell him that. 

Trudeau's zero content, zero emissions plan

The Justin Trudeau government has unveiled its "plan" or "road map" for Canada to achieve zero net carbon emissions by 2050.  I have placed those terms in quotes because this isn't much of a plan, and it's no kind of a road map. It is at most a statement of intent, another example of the government's addiction to virtue signalling.

The zero emissions by 2050 goal is one the government has been talking about for some time. Today it has tabled legislation, Bill C-12, which the CBC website, quoting Trudeau, portrays as "an accountability framework that will "ensure we reach this net-zero goal in a way that gives Canadians confidence."  At first blush that sounds pretty vague, and the details do nothing to correct that impression. Let's return to the CBC article for more:

" (The) bill doesn't set out exactly how the federal government should go about reducing emissions — it does not mandate further increases to the carbon tax, for example. It simply stipulates that Ottawa must set a goal and work to achieve it through measures that are deemed effective".

So there are no details?  How about a timetable, then? Well, sort of: 

"The legislation also requires that the minister table a plan in Parliament outlining how Ottawa plans to meet those targets. The legislation does not stipulate what role the provinces and territories will play in this national emissions reduction plan.

The first emissions reduction target, and the plan to meet it, would be tabled nine months after the bill is passed through Parliament. That first target would be for the year 2030.

Nine months after the bill is passed, so in all likelihood a year or more from today! Didn't Trudeau tell the media this morning that Canadians "want climate action now"? Oh well, there must at least be meaningful consequences if the interim or final targets are not reached, right? Far from it!

"While the government describes this legislation as "legally binding," there would be no tangible penalty applied if the country fails to drive down emissions as promised.

The government would simply have to state publicly in Parliament that it failed to meet its goals. There would be no meaningful legal consequences if Ottawa falls short. "

What's more, "A future government also could simply repeal the law and do away with reporting obligations altogether."

I accept the science regarding climate change and accept that we have to do something about it, though I'm no eco-warrior. This legislation is astoundingly vacuous and almost completely pointless. Can't wait to hear what Greta Thunberg has to say about it. 

Crisis upon crisis

Well, isn't this just what Canada needs right now?  With the coronavirus pandemic still far from over, with major decisions still to be made, we now have a full-fledged crisis in Justin Trudeau's Federal Government.

Last evening it emerged that Finance Minister Bill Morneau had met with Trudeau and tendered his resignation.  Morneau's departure has been mooted in the media for some time: both he and Trudeau have been caught up in a tawdry little scandal involving the well-established WE Charity*, and the way of politics is that if someone has to be sacrificed to defuse the situation, it's unlikely to be the boss. The Federal Ethics Commissioner is on the case, and it might be noted that this is the third time that Trudeau's actions have attracted attention from that quarter.

Morneau insists Trudeau did not request his resignation.  He claimed that he simply decided that this was the right time for someone else to take over.  Frankly this is about as credible as the idea that  General Eisenhower would have quit when the troops were part-way up the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. Alongside the WE scandal, there have been rampant rumours of disagreements between Morneau and his boss, whether over the huge sums that have been committed to fight the pandemic, or over Trudeau's apparent wish to use the recovery phase to force through a major "green" shift in the economy. 

A Cabinet shuffle is imminent, but it is already clear that Chrystia Freeland will take over Morneau's job.  And why not? As Deputy Prime Minister, she has already been doing a lot of Trudeau's job since last year's election; one more massive responsibility can't hurt, right? It's not that she is unqualified -- after all, she took charge of the often tricky negotiations for the replacement NAFTA treaty with the US and Mexico, so she knows her way around the economy. Still, it is becoming hard to avoid the impression that she is the only member of the Cabinet Trudeau really trusts, which can't be a good thing.  

Don't go away -- there's much more. Trudeau reportedly plans to "prorogue" (i.e. suspend) Parliament  for a month or two, to allow him time to reset the agenda. An October resumption, starting with a new Throne Speech quickly followed by a budget statement, seems to be in the works. To suspend Parliament, Trudeau has to seek the approval of the Queen's representative in Canada, the Governor General.  

That should be an interesting conversation. The G-G, former astronaut (really!) Julie Payette, has a couple of ongoing scandals of her own, involving allegedly toxic conditions in the workplace and excessive spending on her security details. Until yesterday, it seemed likely that any early meeting between Trudeau and Payette would involve his quietly suggesting her resignation, but it appears that the bus took a wrong turn and ran over Morneau instead.   

Assuming that Ms Payette accedes to the request to prorogue Parliament, Trudeau's problems will still be far from over. His government does not command a majority in the House of Commons. A vote of non-confidence at the earliest opportunity is certain and it would not be easy for Trudeau to win. A loss in that vote would trigger an election in the middle of the pandemic, so Trudeau's best hope may be that none of the opposition parties wants to take responsibility for that. The Bloc Quebecois is offering the sensible suggestion that Trudeau hand over the reins to another minister (presumably Chrystia Freeland) while the Ethics Commissioner investigates the WE scandal. 

It may yet come to that.   Stay tuned -- Canadian politics is rarely this interesting, but Trudeau's frequent blunders are changing that.  

* In brief, the government awarded a lucrative contract to WE earlier this year, without putting the business out for tender.  Trudeau and Morneau chose not to recuse themselves from this decision even though both had allowed family members to benefit financially from it. In Trudeau's case, his brother and mother had both reaped substantial fees for appearing and speaking at functions arranged by the charity.  As for Morneau, the fact that two of his daughters worked for WE did not appear to bother him at decision time, but his failure to repay WE for a family trip to Ecuador a few years ago has proved harder to shake off, although he has recently scribbled off a cheque for C$ 41,000 by way of reimbursement.     

This could get interesting

We learn via CBC that former Bank of Canada and Bank of England Governor Mark Carney has taken on a side hustle. After his spell on Threadneedle Street ended early this year, Carney was appointed as a UN special envoy on climate change and climate finance. Apparently that's not a full-time gig, because he has been providing advice to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on how Canada should respond to the COVID-19 crisis.

Carney surely knows his way around a crisis.  He was at the helm of the Bank of Canada during the global financial meltdown, and more recently led the Bank of England's response to the Brexit vote and the subsequent chaotic negotiations -- indeed, he agreed to extend his term in London in order to ensure an experienced hand on the tiller on Brexit day itself,  at the start of this year. The fact that Carney served in both Ottawa and London under Conservative governments may be part of his appeal to Trudeau right now, possibly helping to deflect potential criticisms that the Government's pandemic response is politically driven. 

That said, Carney's re-emergence in Ottawa gives us plenty of opportunities for speculation.  For example, how does new Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem feel about it?  The two men seemingly worked well together a decade ago, when Macklem was Carney's Deputy, but Carney is, to put it mildly, not bashful about expressing his views. How will Macklem respond if Carney takes to second-guessing the Bank's, or offering his opinions from the sidelines?

Then there's Finance Minister Bill Morneau to consider. Morneau has been caught up in the ongoing WE Charity scandal, which basically involves suspiciously tight connections and flows of money between a well-connected charity foundation and senior Liberal politicians, including both Morneau and Trudeau himself. Trudeau's Teflon shield seems to be deflecting much of the blame, but Morneau may not be so lucky, especially if Trudeau decides that someone has to go under the bus for appearances' sake.

Carney has long been reported as having political ambitions. Firing Morneau and installing Carney in what is effectively the number two job in the Government would be a bold and risky move, especially as Carney has no seat in Parliament.  Then again, there's a vacant seat in the Toronto area, so a hastily-arranged by-election to get Carney into the House of Commons can't be ruled out.

Lastly, Carney's acceptance of the UN special envoy role reflects a genuine interest in the climate change issue. He regularly raised the hackles of backbench Tories in London by speaking out on the issue. There are reports that Trudeau is looking to use the need to pilot the economy out of the pandemic shutdowns to launch some radical changes, which would undoubtedly focus heavily on "green" issues.  "Green Czar" Mark Carney?  Stranger things have happened. 

Circling the drain

The Government of Canada has been throwing money in all directions since the COVID-driven economic lockdowns began. Much of the spending has been essential to prevent a complete collapse in demand -- the CEWS and CERB benefits for individual workers, for example, although there is mounting evidence of a significant number of fraudulent claims. Bailout funds directed to businesses present more of a mixed picture, especially in cases where a company has taken all the money on offer and still resorted to mass layoffs, Air Canada being a prominent example.

It's no surprise to find that one company with both hands out is Bombardier, which has been effectively a ward of the Federal and Provincial governments for many years.  The company has been selling itself off piecemeal, with the rail, commercial jet and regional jet divisions disposed of, to Alstom,  Airbus and Mitsubishi respectively. Through good luck or good judgment, the company has actually done very well here: none of those assets would be easy to sell in today's market, and all would be bleeding the company of cash it simply doesn't have. 

By selling these substantial divisions, however, Bombardier has in effect bet its future on its business jet operation.  You can make a case that companies will want more of these for their top brass in a post-COVID world, given the shrinkage of commercial airlines. (The opposite argument can also be made, given the ease with which many companies have taken to work-from-home in recent months). For the moment, however, demand for these jets has dried up, and the company recently announced it would be laying off 2500 workers, about one-quarter of its much-reduced labour force.

Even in its shrunken state, Bombardier retains direct access to the spigot for public funds.  Quebec Finance Minister Eric Girard has offered to help the company through "this difficult period", citing the unfortunate precedent of a bailout loan recently offered to, of all things, Cirque du Soleil. And that's not all -- the Federal government has announced a deal, without going to tender, to buy two Challenger jets for early delivery, paying what looks like full list price and more for the privilege. There's not much of Bombardier left to save, but I suppose in current circumstances you can't really blame the owners for asking, or the governments for ponying up yet again. 

What the Teck??

Last week Teck Resources Limited, a Vancouver-based mining corporation, announced its latest financial results. It made mention of its Frontier oilsands project in Alberta, warning that failure by governments to approve the project would cause it to take a write-down in excess of C$ 1 billion.

Meanwhile, even as it faced the rail blockades, the Trudeau government was wrestling with its decision on whether to give Frontier the green light, having promised an announcement by the end of this month. There were media reports that many of Trudeau's parliamentary caucus opposed the deal.

At the start of last weekend, the Alberta government announced deals with two First Nations communities whose lands would be affected by the project, clearing a major stumbling block.

And on Sunday evening.....Teck abruptly withdrew its application for approval for Frontier, effectively killing the project after years of planning. It duly took the C$ 1 billion write-down.

Cue the blame game.  Alberta Premier Jason Kenney was quick to point the finger at Ottawa, citing Trudeau's commitment to emissions reduction -- oilsands mining is notoriously polluting -- and even suggesting that the rail blockades had persuaded Teck that it could not proceed with the deal.  Teck's own reasoning was rather more subtle.  It noted that international investors were looking for energy projects in jurisdictions that had "reconciled resource developments with climate change", something that the Kenney administration has largely (and loudly) refused to do. 

It is quite possible that Teck has done itself, Alberta and Canada a favour here.  Even if approval had been granted this week, the project would have taken years to complete and would have seriously strained Teck's balance sheet. Payback for the investment would have taken decades.  Can anyone seriously suggest that a highly-polluting fossil fuel project that will not pay off until well after the middle of the century is a smart move right now? 

The loss of jobs (7000 for construction of Frontier; 2400 ongoing once operational) and government revenues (projected at C$ 70 billion lifetime) may be a blow.  However, Alberta's oil industry already has huge unfunded back-end costs, with abandoned wells littering the Province. Adding a 270 square kilometre open-cast mine to that burden would seem the height of folly. If Teck's decision forces Alberta and Ottawa to start looking at alternatives to megaprojects such as Frontier, that's a good thing, even if it may not seem that way at the moment. 

When the railroad did not run*

Mohawk activists have been "blockading"** the main CN rail line between Toronto and Montreal for the past twelve days. In response, CN has suspended all of its freight services east of Toronto and VIA Rail has cancelled passenger service, such as it is, all across Canada.  The railroad is not as crucial to the economy as it once was,  but the impact of the blockade and shutdowns is starting to grow. Shortages of propane in Quebec and Atlantic Canada could start to emerge this week if the situation is not resolved.

The blockade is being staged in sympathy with hereditary chiefs on the Wet'suwet'en territory in northern British Columbia, who are opposed to the building of a gas pipeline across their land.  Given its remoteness from major population centres,  Wet'suwet'en is not a promising spot for demonstrations to bring national attention to the cause, so the chiefs have called for sympathy action and the Mohawks, 5000 kilometres to the east, have responded.  Makes sense: the line they are targeting is the busiest in Canada, and it just so happens that their Tyenindaga reserve directly abuts the CN corridor.   

Canada's track record in dealing with its indigenous population has been appalling, and although things have improved in recent years, the performance of senior politicians in dealing with the current crisis leaves a lot to be desired.  Let's take a look at the two main Federal leaders, PM Justin Trudeau and Tory leader (though not for much longer), Andrew Scheer.

Since October's Federal election, Trudeau has handed off most of his day-to-day responsibilities to his Deputy PM, Chrystia Freeland.  It's scarcely a surprise to find that Trudeau spent the first week of the crisis gallivanting around the world.  First he was in Africa, making simpering speeches about the evils of slavery in Senegal in hopes of winning that country's support for Canada's bid to join the UN Security Council.  Then there was a stop for a security conference in Germany.

Trudeau has now returned to Canada and has issued a couple of statements about the blockade, basically calling for dialogue rather than confrontation.  However, he is still scheduled to swan off to a meeting in Barbados this week to further his UN ambitions. If he actually goes ahead with this,  it will firmly secure his growing reputation as a deeply unserious man with no real interest in his job. One wonders if it has occurred to him that an unresolved crisis with his own Indigenous population is not exactly a recommendation for a seat at the Security Council.

Still, it could be worse: we could have ended up with Andrew Scheer as PM.  Backed by a chorus of Tory party grandees, Scheer is calling for a robust police response to bust up the blockade and get the railroads open again. In a stunningly tone-deaf choice of words, Scheer called on the protesters to "check their privilege", not something likely to resonate with people struggling to make ends meet on a reservation.

Scheer seems not to have taken any heed of the problems that have always arisen when force has been used to deal with conflicts of this kind: see, for example, the Oka crisis of 1990 .  More recently, when Indigenous protesters closed a rail line near Sarnia, Ontario in 2012, PM Stephen Harper (like Scheer, a Tory) declined to use force, and the matter was eventually resolved peacefully.

Apart from a not-inconsiderable number of hotheads who would no doubt like to "teach the Indians a lesson", most Canadians doubtless hope the present crisis ends that way too. The Mohawk are savvy enough to know that they have the upper hand right now, but also savvy enough to know that if they push too hard and start to cause serious shortages of key products in Eastern Canada, sympathy will quickly evaporate. A full commitment by Justin Trudeau to finding a solution would undoubtedly be helpful. Putting off the trip to Barbados would be a good start.     


* Hat-tip to Gordon Lightfoot, Canadian Railroad Trilogy.

** I put the term blockading in quotes because the demonstrators are not actually on the tracks.  They are on their own land, but close enough that CN has determined it cannot run trains safely.

UPDATE: PM Trudeau has bowed to the inevitable and will not be going to Barbados this week, opting instead to stay at home and work on trying to solve the crisis.  That's good -- and with so many controversial resource projects on the docket, starting with the Teck oilsands mine, he's going to need all the practice he can get.